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Kate, when I say that I am targeting countries, the content on the website will obviously be translated into their local language. So, it will be translating but for different countries on the website. I hope you meant the same thing when you said "and not just translating". I believe the best way to go would be to use sub-folders rather than sub-domains to maintain the domain legacy and authority across the countries.
I will be targeting actual countries Kate. Will also be using Google webmasters to geo-target for different sub-domains/sub-directories.
Hasan, I think that is not a plugin problem but what I feel is that it has more to down with the website not being accessible or something on that grounds. I have seen similar posts in some other areas too. Do let us know if you have this rectified.
Was the website in some transition recently or did it have a downtime recently.
Dan, for the old 'overview' pages, if they were indexed or had some content anytime or if you know/feel that they have backlinks, please redirect them as well to the new url. Also, it is not good to have 302s on the URLs unless and untill there is a specific case for it which I doubt will be. Always have 301 redirects.
On bulk uploading, it depends on your CMS, right? How does it support the file format and accepts the protocol is CMS dependent thing.
This tool here will help you track rankings for each day (in different countries too!) - www.authoritylabs.com, though it is a paid one.
Hey Dan - You should be adding 301 redirects if the pages are indexed. But, as a safe route you should be adding a 301 redirect since they were present on the website and can be linked from an external source as well which may lead to its indexation later.
You should redirect all such pages so as to ensure that the search engines do not find 404s on your site or probably you could block them from the robots.txt file.
Also, If the page has some authority in the search engines - authority refers to link juice, sites linking it or rankings or any traffic, best is to redirect it to the alternative or close page so as to pass the authority or if the page does not have any authority and you would want to reduce the 301 redirects on your server, block it! This call would largely depend on the page's value but in any case, do not just delete it.
Thanks Federico, will take a look at the video. Though, for me the battle still remains on how to proceed, for now the sub-directory option looks the one. I hope to get some more views on this before I finalize the architecture.
Hi Folks - Need your advice on the pros and cons of going with a sub-domain vs a sub-directory approach for a multi lingual website. The best would be a ccTLD but that is not possible now, so I would be more interested in knowing your take on these 2 options.
Though, I have gone through http://www.stateofsearch.com/international-multilingual-sites-criteria-to-establish-seo-friendly-structure/ and this somewhat vouches for a sub-directory, but what would you say'?
Thats good, just keep your targets in mind.
Yes Wendy, the frequent changes in the file names will definitely have an impact in the rankings. Though, you are using a SE friendly redirect, it is STILL a new URL for the SE to index. Everytime it finds a redirect, it takes some time to understand and pass on the value.
When the value is passed, when through a 301 redirect, there is some link juice lost. Also, when you redirect A To B and then B To C, make sure you also redirect A To C. Do not have dual redirection on the old filenames, change everything when there is a change in filename, including the link building also (old links and new acquired).
I would still suggest to refrain from doing frequent changes to file names!
So, you have got the basics fine which is good. If you have good rankings for the root domain other than Google US and if those rankings are important to you )in terms of KPIs, business benefits) then I would refrain from doing the change.
First, try to get the rankings from the sub-folders for the countries that your root domain is ranking for and then make the change. It may not be necessary that you gain immediately with the change, but there are high chances you might loose a couple of rankings in other countries. Better Safe, then Sorry!
Chandu, the best way to let Google know is the sitemap, which you have done. Even if that has not worked out, I sense there might be some technical issues with the website. Being a ecommerce site, the chances are high. Conduct a SEO Audit to find out the potential harms and solve them.
Have you tried indexing them in Bing, if not give it a try!
James, if you could give the URL of the category folder and an example of the pages ranking, I can have a look at it to see if something was wrong. Without that, it would be hard to take a call as this is not a standard issue.
Hi Folks,
I would like to have your opinion on the best ways/approaches we need to take if we want to rank the same keywords in different GEOs. To consider, I have a set of 100+ keywords which I would like to rank up in different GEOs, for example 6 different countries and some of these are not English, say france and UAE.
What would be the best approach to deal in this case on a logical basis?
Any suggestions?
Sara, this post will help you get the solution.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164734
You are welcome Jasmeet. By Pagination I mean the URLs that come in the number section which is at the bottom of the page, i.e. 1 2 3 4 5 6 (and so on..). These pages were earlier dynamic and now they have been rewritten to their static schema.
On the description, I would strongly recommend to change them, you can have some dynamic description being generated that would prevent the load of manual editing of the meta description. On this being the issue?, well there are so many factors Jasmeet that I doubt to say this is the one, but yes, correcting this will definitely help the website in the over all performance and can help solve this one too.
Identifying the duplicate URLs in a website majorly depends on understanding the URL structure so that is one manual short way and if you want tools to do that work, there are a few:
1. G Site Crawler - This is a downloadable tool and identifies the URLs by crawling the entire site.
2. SEOMoz Pro - If you have a paid account for the campaign, they have duplicate issues as one of their errors to be reported. The excel later can be downloaded. No tool, runs on the Moz interface.
3. XENU - There is no particular classification of duplicate URLs so this may not be the appropriate one in this case.
Let me know if you need any more info,
Cheers,
Akhil
Well, the home page is not missing in the SERP, it is just that its appearing through the site search operator. Your home page is INDEXED all right, see the attached snapshot.
I believe earlier you had dynamic URLs for the pagination pages and now they are 301 redirected to their static URLs. But, Google has still indexed these URLs and they have the same title as the Home Page. For more understanding, check the link -
(It is still in the transition of updating the titles)
It will take some time for Google to do away with the old listings and have a clearer index. Also, you need to place a canonical tag on http://www.girls--games.com/new,1,1.html . The canonical tag should be of the Home Page (I assume you know the canonical tag).
Once these changes done, Google should gradually show your Home Page in site search.